Whistle Happy Umpires

[Ichabod Noodle]

we're always led to believe that things were so much better in "the old days", but just watching the Winners Rebooted for Round 15, 1982 I noticed that even on the highlighted the umps were blowing the whistle quite a bit, so I checked out the match stats across the round for the free kick count.

Sydney 41 - Geelong 43
Richmond 40 - Hawthorn 35
St Kilda 41 - Footscray 45
Essendon 37 - Fitzroy 39
Collingwood 59 - North 39
Carlton 49 - Melbourne 46

So the lowest number of frees paid was the Richmond Hawthorn game - and there's still 75 frees paid.

98 free kicks in the Collingwood North game

And people complain about the over umpiring today

 

[Mr Ripper]

And free flowing games they would have been, too, compared to the stop-start game of today.

Paying free kicks promotes open play.

 

[pazza]

The umpires from that era also got along very well with the players so that's why the petulance to them wasn't great.

 

[AstonSouffle]

Yet everyone imploded when the Umpires up the ante and paid free kicks like crazy, see the round where Freo beat Richmond at the G this year(Can't remember the round, might have been 15). Seriously, claptrap like 'If they're going to do it, they should have warned us' etc. etc. despite imo all the free kicks being there.

But as an aside since I've just remembered from that round, the block rule should be removed as it inherently causes congestion as it promotes that everyone should go for the ball like seagulls rather than help clear a path for your key forward.

 

[Knobslayer]

we're always led to believe that things were so much better in "the old days", but just watching the Winners Rebooted for Round 15, 1982 I noticed that even on the highlighted the umps were blowing the whistle quite a bit, so I checked out the match stats across the round for the free kick count.

Sydney 41 - Geelong 43
Richmond 40 - Hawthorn 35
St Kilda 41 - Footscray 45
Essendon 37 - Fitzroy 39
Collingwood 59 - North 39
Carlton 49 - Melbourne 46

So the lowest number of frees paid was the Richmond Hawthorn game - and there's still 75 frees paid.

98 free kicks in the Collingwood North game

And people complain about the over umpiring today

Still cant get over how the umpires in the finals can pay soft free kicks in front of goal that can make a real difference to a match, then at other times not do it. Always thought in finals you let the game flow, not make it even harder for the wa teams that already have a crook flying deal all year.